Clingstone
Clingstone is a 103-year-old mansion in Narragansett Bay.
In 1961, when Mr. Wood bought the house with his ex-wife Joan, who is also an architect, for $3,600, it had been empty for two decades. All of its 65 windows were smashed, and its slate roof was wide open to the sky. Vandals had been creative: on the second floor, the interior shingles were embedded with marbles (they still are), which had been blasted there by some sort of firearm.
On three sides, four-by-eight-foot plywood signs proclaimed: “For Sale. See Any Broker.” “So we did see any broker,” Mr. Wood said. “And he told us the owners were asking $5,000 but they’d take much, much less.”
…
Every spring for a decade or so after the sale, Mr. Wood said, he cursed “this albatross,” his roofless, windowless, floorless, powerless, waterless house. Wrangling what had been a rich man’s plaything, attended by servants and even its own shipyard, into a working couple’s weekend getaway turned out to be much more than a working couple could handle. Eventually, though, as the Woods mustered the talents of their friends, Clingstone and its maintenance evolved into a communal lifestyle, and ultimately a kind of religion.
[NYT]
